


Point of No Return: Revisited

by FaustianAspirant



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Gen, Righteous Jo!verse, S5E18
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-26
Updated: 2012-12-26
Packaged: 2017-11-22 11:06:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/609149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FaustianAspirant/pseuds/FaustianAspirant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jo decides to surrender to Michael. Anna decides not to let her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Point of No Return: Revisited

**Author's Note:**

  * For [centreoftheselights](https://archiveofourown.org/users/centreoftheselights/gifts).



It’s not even irony, come to think of it. When Anna swapped a lifetime of absolutes for the categorically ephemeral, and looked on, aghast, as it lived up to its name through decay, what can you call it but fitting? 

Foolish, she supposes. You could call it foolish. 

You could even put a stop to it. You could tell her to stop, stop now, because she’s breaking something she was never really aware of in the first place, but it lacks a certain argumentative sway.  
You could wax every shade of rhapsodic about how her mother would never have wanted this, but that’s a touch below the belt. 

You could give up the ghost and lose faith already, but then, you’ve got nothing to lose. 

In the end, Anna doesn’t break down – or rather, she doesn’t wince, or cry, or do anything that might suggest it. Instead, she forces herself to mirror Jess’ show of patience, and says, softly enough: “Say ‘yes’ to Michael, and everything ends here. You don’t mean this, Jo.” It’s neither benign nor judgemental. It’s as close as she thinks she can get to a statement of fact. 

It occurs to her, belatedly, that ‘fact’ hasn’t been a relevant quantifier for months now. 

“You sure about that?” retorts Jo, practically assaulting Anna with eye contact, as if this could somehow vouch for her seriousness. In fairness, there’s no weakness there. “Cause I don’t think you are.” 

All things considered, there’s absolutely nothing there.

Then, abruptly, Jo breaks away, snapping back to direct her gaze at the table. Her fingers ghost across her right hand pocket, half-reaching for the knife Anna knows that she keeps there. It’s a familiar gesture that she seems to think better of, squeezing her hand into a fist instead. Her knuckles give an audible click. Anna feels her mouth slide shut. 

There’s something in Jo that craves, or demands – not violence, exactly, but a certain brand of severity. With Jo, there is a tacit insistence on a gruff, steely sort of strictness in which to make compromises would be scorned; to make allowances, fatal. Anything less, and she’d feel patronised. 

Her other hand clenches. 

As it is, Anna refuses to surrender that kind of respect. “Please,” she says instead, in complete defiance of everything. 

Jo stiffens. Practiced insouciance deepens into actual hate. “Go to hell, Anna,” she snaps. A bitten-off pause. “It’s where we’re all headed anyway.” 

That was… deliberate. Deliberate-ish. 

Anna doesn’t let herself react, but Jess, poised next to her at the edge of the counter, holds no such compunctions. She doesn’t hold up at all, in fact. Instead, she - splinters. “This is on me,” she says, phrased like an accusation. “All of this, this was my screw-up, not yours. Don’t take away my chance to fix it. We’re - I’m your sister - I’m supposed to protect you! Jo. Let me protect you, for _once_.”

Jo looks up, for all the world as if it were casual. Her eyes flick towards Jess, once. “You’re not my sister,” she says, flatly.

Jess’ expression tightens. “I –” she begins. And ends, looking more or less murderous. This can only come to blows, or tears – but for now, both of them are still. 

Feeling strangely like both spectator and referee, Anna steps between them, her back to Jess. Jo leans against the pool table in the semblance of a loose sprawl – almost an echo of Ash – but, looking closer, her muscles are locked tight; arms as brittle as fired clay. 

Anna sways closer. Jo makes no attempt to stop her. 

“We always knew this would be difficult –” Anna begins, before Jo cuts her off. 

“Somehow I don’t think soapboxing’s gonna break the deadlock.” Unexpectedly, she winks, teeth bared in a sharp half-grin. “Word to the wise.” She pauses, satisfied. “But hell, keep trying. God knows we’ve nothing else left.” There is another pause, in which Anna starts to speak, but Jo breaks in again, with relish. “Except – huh! God doesn’t actually care.” The grin drops, like a flash of light caught and lost in a metal surface. 

Deliberate, then. By anyone’s account. 

Anna, realising she has been biting the inside of her cheek, stops. Relaxes. “Jo,” she exhales, and it doesn’t mean anything much – it’s meant to soothe. Another step forward. Slowly, reminding herself that her hand should not, by all rights, be trembling – and, accordingly, it stills - she reaches out. 

Jo regards her with an impassive stare. “Touch me and I’ll stab you,” she says, unmoving. 

Anna’s hand stills.

-

They lock her, ludicrously enough, in her own bedroom. She goes without further argument, having made her point. Jess follows her inside for a brief, inconclusive conversation, during which Anna stands on the other side of the door, forcing her fingers to straighten every time she feels them curl into fists. She counts the lines on the wooden panelling thrice over, then divides the number by the patches of damp on the ceiling. She becomes acutely aware of the regular rise and fall of her chest, and finds herself so unbalanced by it that she ceases to breathe entirely until the door clicks open again. 

“Hey,” says Jess, looking mildly surprised to see her still waiting; surprised, but not for long. “She’ll come around. I know it. I know _her_. She doesn’t just – she won’t just give in to Michael.”

Anna picks up where she left off; inhales. “You have faith in her,” she remarks, shortly. “I wish I could say the same.”

Jess fixes her with an odd sort of look – one that could almost spell disappointment, if Anna were any further fallen: and as one abomination to another, she feels it is somewhat uncalled for.

“Keep watch,” is all she says to Anna. 

Anna doesn’t nod, or agree, because there is no need. 

Jess starts down the corridor, before stopping again, without warning. Glancing back over her shoulder, she says: “I’d _die_ before I’d say ‘yes’ to Lucifer.” 

Anna doesn’t respond, because Jess is not really talking to her any more. Jess, for her part, leaves. 

For the next hour or so, Anna paces the length of the hallway, subsuming her thoughts into the clean rhythm of her footsteps. She is troubled to find that it doesn’t really help. Then again, she wasn’t expecting anything less. Or – more, actually. Certainly she doesn’t expect solace, any more than she thinks that Jo will eventually see sense. Jo was always an – inadequate – foundation on which to build her new convictions; convictions which were, in turn, always – fallible, always slippery. God, but it’s all such a mess. 

This is nothing to build a new life on. This is nothing on which to build _anything_.

Anna reaches the top of the stairs, and pivots, evenly. She begins to travel back towards the door. 

There is a muffled crash from Jo’s room.

Anna rocks back mid-step, nearly losing her footing. Hastily, shoving a hand against the wall to right herself, she runs towards the door. Fingers stiff, she fumbles with the lock before it finally yields, swinging back to reveal an empty room. 

“Jo?” she breathes out in trepidation, stepping in onto the carpet. 

“Anna.” 

With the flat of one hand, the door is pushed shut. Anna scarcely has time to register that the other is bleeding before it slams onto the sigil, palm first, and she is sent whirling soundlessly into the dark.

-

_Our father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name…_

Like a fish caught in a line, Anna’s head jerks back to follow the sound. It rings stark against the shadows, like a compass point, piercing on in and through. A totem. A point of focus. It takes all of her strength to summon her wings, and twice that to lift them. The way back feels like the most claustrophobic of labyrinths, like dragging all her unwieldy limbs through a thicket of hooks and snarls – but she rebuffs the backwards pull, hurling towards the prayer. 

She lands with a negligible stumble, in the murk of the outside street. 

“On earth as it is in heaven,” she murmurs, almost thoughtlessly touching two fingers to the preacher’s brow. His Bible hits the sidewalk in a ripple of pages. 

Jo seems pinned into place, caught mid-motion. To catch her halfway would simply be to grab momentum by the sleeve and drag it to its logical conclusion.

Anna takes one step forwards. 

Immediately, Jo backs away, her face momentarily vanishing as it slides under the shadow of the alleyway. Anna slips into the dark, shepherding her back with silent, measured footsteps. A metronome to Jo’s panicked retreat. 

They stand, facing each other. Jo is three feet away from Anna, and three feet away from the wall. 

“I don’t blame you,” says Anna, simply. A deliberate admission. Jo makes a soft sound that is almost lost to the shadows, as Anna takes another step forwards, clearing the first foot. She stops. “I lost you the same way I lost everything: piece by piece, like clockwork.” Arms by her side, and back straight, she keeps her speech clipped, and devoid of inflection. 

The ground is slick with last night’s rain. Four shallow splashes mark Jo’s last few steps towards the wall.

“For all that I worked, you took away my place in heaven,” she says, with the same preternatural calm. Stepping closer still.

Jo breathes sharply, shrinking into the wall. For some reason, it echoes more fully than speech, with the intensity of a stab.

“For all that I prayed, you took away God.” Anna has stopped now, with inches still standing between them. 

Jo swallows: fatalistic, almost anticipant. She lets her head drop back against the wall, as if the words were assault enough; as if she had always expected this surrender. As if it were only a matter of waiting. Waiting and provocation. 

“Bit by bit, you destroyed everything that made up me, until all that was left was _you_. And then, even that, you took away too.” Anna does not let herself move. Anna does not let herself breathe; she listens to Jo breathe instead.

“Finish it,” says Jo, thinly, and it’s like – no, it _is_ – a plea. 

Anna regards her, aloof. “There’s nothing that I blame you for.” 

“ _Anna_.” Eyes half-lidded in resignation.

“I can’t expect to lean on you, when you’ve got nothing left to hold you up,” continues Anna, unwaveringly. “Jess won’t be enough. Heaven won’t help. God isn’t here to stop you.”

In a sudden jolt of motion, she whips out one arm to pin Jo by the throat. 

She spits out the words in a whisper. “ _But there’s still me._ ” 

Now she can feel the pulse of irregular breath against her palm; captures it between her fingers with a subtle clasp. Jo’s eyes flicker shut, in unsteady acceptance. “ _Please_ ,” she gasps out in a final, desperate murmur. 

For a moment, Anna lets her grip tighten. Jo is a mess of compliance and indrawn breath: mouth torn into a grimace; hair spilt across her face in jagged wisps. Slowly, Anna releases. Bringing her other hand up, she brushes it to Jo’s forehead. 

The strain dissipates. She falls forwards: a warm weight into her waiting arms.

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas, Lulu! Sorry this is somewhat late. But hey, it's still the 25th somewhere in the world... right?


End file.
